Aliens: Perspectives
by I-Write-What-I-Want-To
Summary: How is a hive born? How does one of these deadly beasts communicate with its mother; the queen she serves and protects? What happens inside the mind of a Xenomorph? Better yet, what happens to the mind of any creature outside of the species when it becomes linked to the hive mind?
1. Prologue: Patricide

Being born. It's terrible. I loved so much, but from inside. I loved her from the inside. I could hear her thoughts, her voice but most clearly her heart; yet as I grew she became ill, and my instincts strong - so much stronger than she was. It was fear that drove me to it. Fear. I have no idea what made me so afraid but I had to get free, I felt like I was being crushed and the world inside mother was just much too small. You chew your way through, you sever the connection and carve your way out... With your teeth. Every time one of us is born we have to kill our own mother. There is nothing more painful or more terrifying than feeling their mind go dark. Empty. Void. So we run straight away to hide from everything; cold and wet with their severed life; shivering in the silence that mother left behind when we killed her.

That's when you hear it for the first time. Her. The All Mother. The voice that makes everything go away, for the understanding in it is not only vast but knowing as she'd committed this very same crime once as well; she could sooth the pain away in an instant. 'I am here. I am your mama now. Come to me now, come to mama.'

Everyone in my family is an orphan and the fact that we were born is why.


	2. Eldest

Being the eldest has its advantages but also plenty of drawbacks; I have responsibilities that no one else would think to attend to until I make it pointedly obvious to them. Smooth Face was resting in the walls shirking duties repairing the nest after this most recent attack, she should have been licking wounds in the walls closed and placing new cradles. The lazy young nest maid was a constant hassle to deal with, more so than the others and I would simply delight the day her cranial dome became so marred with scars that she had no choice but to molt that pretty face off and become a warrior.

I could be kinder but that was not my prerogative; I was no nurse to the wrigglers and it wasn't my job to lick the faces of those that needed to be coddled – my job is to protect the hive from the interlopers who shoot their deadly stingers and to make sure all matters secondarily important to All Mother's cradle boring are attended to. Period. All Mother could handle the coddling of dribble sucking younglings.

In this moment of relative peace I spent my time placing the limp forms of life givers in the proper positions propped up and pressed into the soft precipices of tunnel flesh, this was a warriors duty when the ones spared to give rise to children had been armed and deadly as we eldest and seasoned sisters upon their arrival, these ones may wake and attack if they are not pressed and sealed tight to the wall. I licked at the creature gently as not to wake it; my jaws opening to expose my toothed tongue so that it may be used to weave a proper hammock of resin to hold the life giver secure.

_Your sacrifice gives us life, until you draw your last breath we will care for and protect you as a sister._

With that tired old promise made it was time to smear the scent of our family upon its face and neck; now with skin impregnated by my familiar scent no one would touch the creature except the nest maids and the would be crawler meant to plant the seed. This odor would illicit gentle submission from the newborn orders whose first instinct is to find nourishment, the mother of another would be an applicable source of flesh sustenance for a newly emerged child without the injunction of "off limits" that mine and other elder sister's dominant scents carried.

I was nearly finished with my work, the soon to be mother whimpering out sleepily in her cocoon as I marked her as a life giver, that sound vibrating inside of my senses and giving the creature a more defined shape in my vision – screams, I was interrupted by screams and the life giver I attended to started awake, wriggling and crying out in shock or perhaps disorientation as pained cries of another echoed in the distance.

_Smooth face! _I paused to turn my face toward where I knew her to be sleeping, tucked away in a high crevice. That lazy over grown child, of course she would pretend not to hear me. _Do you not hear that? Attend to it immediately... Smooth face!_

My minds talons could feel her curling tighter around herself, murmuring her discomfort at watching over the younglings coming into the world, feeling their pain and shock at what price must be paid for life. It apparently disturbed her more so than the others - and it did disturb all on some level though not to the degree that the fare faced nest hand was made uncomfortable. This is what happens when weaklings are selected as life bearers, weak minded offspring like Smooth Face. I could have snarled and spat I was so annoyed with this one, but All Mother cooed her patience into me from afar where she nested, the contentment she pressed into my mind washing over and overriding my irritation, leaving me only slightly perturbed that I had no resolve left to punish the young nest maid.

_The youngling..._ All Mother reminded me of the child being born nearby as she soothed my anger away from me to exchange it for obedience. _...Look after the youngling._ _Dealing with Smooth Face can wait._ I added onto her statement which to my triumph she did not correct to be lenient instead.

The life bearer I had been tending was secure, I'd let it whine and cry for a little while as I dealt with another's job just this once. I could traverse the tangled corridors of our cavernous home with ease; I had been the one to lay down its foundation after all and map the tunnels in my mind for all to reference freely, pinpointing the location of the agonized one was as simple as finding a wound on my own flesh with my talons but there was not much to do until the process was done.

The youngling would not except the comfort of a like mind until the connection with its mother was severed, to one so small the entire universe is within its mother, who else's thoughts could it possibly need to hear but that one within which it lived?

It is unsettling to watch but by now in my life this is a scene I have grown numb toward; I'd stopped recalling the feeling of my own mama's thoughts inside of me whilst watching the next generation into our midst long ago, yet this time I did ponder - just a little.

It was best to lie in wait, out of sight as the mother gave violent birth to the very newest in our strong line. This was a private moment between my new sister and the one that gave her breath and blood; there was no need to intervene until their connection with one another went null. I'm still unsure of whether or not the mothers can hear us - their children - as we heard them, I've surmised long since my own time of being small that they may not even know we exist until we begin the ritual of leaving them so harshly, perhaps they think so loudly that we may hear them but they cannot hear the inner most coos of a child whose 'voice' is so small; then again what is there for one so tiny with nothing yet in the way of experiences beyond the comfort of mama's heart rhythm to say? Not much until the claustrophobic fear takes hold probably.

The mother gave a rasp and sputtered out another guttural sob, flinching at every move that the young one made from within and then it was over. Spilling forth from her mothers flesh my sister cried out with an agony that she shared with the life giver, they both gave a shrill shriek as the little one tumbled onto the moist floors, twitching and wriggling herself into tight coils as the life bearer shuddered out a final breath. It took a tense moment for the child to realize what it had done, for the isolation inside herself to take hold; I suddenly wished I had been here to properly position this selection of mothers, the child bolted as expected but in the wrong direction.

I had to spring into her path to stop the little one from skittering right down the corridor that led to the surface. What oaf still wet with her mothers blood had positioned the life givers so close to the cavern mouth? I'd beat sense into the fool once that mystery was solved. I need to listen to the hum of the hive more attentively as I am apparently missing moments that I wish did not require my common sense to manage properly. I needed only to breathe in her direction to stop her flight from the scene of her terrible crime, her instincts already strong enough to present the right response to me; lie still and submit to her elder. Ah, All Mother speaks now - the defining moment we all remember replaying to us, impressing upon the child and imprinting her to us.

One cannot help but to shudder and shiver in her chitin as All Mother made her powerful voice known. The entire hive responds on some level to announce themselves to the child, that they are not alone however the unified hum of the hive to greet a newborn wriggler is brief and it is hardly an even slight interruption to the regime of daily life and struggles here. The child was soothed and I had the proper opportunity to observe it. This one was a little different than the majority of young, its chitin was already harder than your standard newborn child, head nearly fully formed and arms better developed though overall it was no bigger than average. This youngling had an already determined destiny, her first molts would yield the harder flesh shell of a warrior, bypassing the stage of a working nest maid all together.

Bleakly I wondered why as my talons rolled the child over to further examine it - All Mother needed more warriors under my already fierce militia? What could she be plotting? Mother did keep secrets, she was better at such a thing than any other, passing the thoughts we need to know to us and saving some pondering for only herself. All had some capacity for secrecy however none so skillfully as _she_.

_That way._ Showing our new sister the path into the interior with my minds exact memory of traversing our home was all I offered her, or all that I cared to at the moment. She fled from my sight to find a safe place to feed and grow while I now had better things to do, Smooth Face was the first on my growing list.

She never suspected that I would creep into her hiding place and drag her out with a talon wrapped around and hooked into the tendons that held her jaws closed; she flailed at the surprise because I had learned as many elders do that the art of keeping ones intentions secret is useful in reprimanding those junior to you, they don't know to run and make the process difficult this way. I wanted not only to show the nest maid that her weakness had nearly cost a child but that I would not tolerate further disobedience from her when I am senior to all but the All Mother.

She wriggled and snapped her jaws wildly but did not have the bravery to actually draw my blood and follow through on a legitimate counter assault against me. Smooth face only maneuvered defensibly to push and find an escape from the squabble as we rolled across the damp stone and disturbed the layer of ambient mist which hovered over the cradles that were only narrowly avoided in the dispute.

She only managed a moment of freedom to flee into another passageway adjacent to the one which she had been assigned to whilst a more experienced pair of nest maids emerged from the surrounding tunnel structure to dedicatedly put their bodies between our flailing limbs and their slumbering charges still nestled within in their fleshy sacs as the tussle drew on post of Smooth Face's recapture. Again she clawed half heartedly for an escape, but this time I would _not_ have it. Her softer cranium was introduced to my own with a dull crack and her struggles slowed with her having been stunned, only flinching this time and falling limp as she _should_ have from the very start as my talons held her long smooth head fast and firm to the floor to pin her.

_If you cannot bare to be a nest hand, then perhaps fledging into a warrior would better suit you..._ I crooned both wearily and terse in my renewed agitation with her, uttering a low hiss to put a needle sharp point on my declaration. _I can assure you this will not feel pleasant. _

My tongue stretched to meet her jawline slowly, not yet aggressive in its intention as I felt along her face and neck, to her shoulder and its adjoining exoskeletal flesh until returning to the skull's apex. She mewled a trilling cry of submission as I caressed her dome with my inner teeth; grazing her softer head with a slightly increasing malicious purpose to the movement. I wanted to peel her chitin apart from her thorax, pull back the pretty smooth flesh from her dome to expose her bare endoskeletal skull; I wanted her ugly truth lain before me so that I could pull her down into warrior-hood by forcing her to molt through ritualistic abuse of her external flesh, then begin the process again to harden her chitin.

Smooth Face though, she tried in vain to shrink away, shuddering under the weight of my thoughts and the intensity of my resolve before shrieking defiantly for reprieve - but no one offered respite as no one was willing to challenge their eldest. I did not care to listen to her pleas, my lips curled back instead to show her the teeth that would mark her pretty face until she had to grow a hard new one - but alas, Smooth Face's date with destiny was interrupted... For now.

_Soft Cries. Come to me, come to mama._ Yes, that was my name. Soft Cries, it wasn't particularly fitting anymore but a birth name sticks far beyond the day it is outgrown. Smooth face was saved and only on the fact that the All Mother apparently had another more important matter which required me. I could sense that this summoning had nothing to do with the lazy nest maid or her impending punishment and liberation from drone-hood. I could only bide my time and hope for another opportunity to rip her chitin, I settled on one final show of complete domination to illustrate what would happen the next time she deliberately ignored her duties. There was an audible slap as my inner fangs pounded the floor only fractions of an inch from opening her head. Smooth face flinched and curled in on herself to submit herself further as I howled into the abysmal labyrinth of the hive, drawing to me the work force of three adjoining chambers to join the three workers already present to observe Smooth Face's would have been reprimand.

_Ten mothers from the older selection are too close to the corridor which leads to the surface. Relocate them at once. _These orders and a stern hiss in the lazy one's direction got her moving as I retired deeper into the hive for council with All Mother.

I had time to ponder further as I made my way to the grand chamber of All Mother, what need did she have for creating cradles that would give rise to children with set destinies? Recent times had given rise to more young whose future was lay down life and limb for the good of all and I found this unusual as mother believed that destinies are meant to change freely and that all must eventually make their own path. Circumstances must be changing, she must be anticipating something threatening to her line; to the hive. This disturbed me.

_Soft cries._ The name was whispered into me with a deep affection as I entered her grand chambers and I bowed my submission to her ornate countenance not out of fear but my loyalty. It is both a gift and a curse to be the eldest, no sister has received the level of attentive care from All Mother than I had in my infancy before my chitin hardened. In those days my home was the cradle of her talons, caging me to her great thorax both protectively and with an unyielding affection; this was because I was alone and cursed to a beginning filled with terror and violence. All of the sisters who were now warriors under my command began life with only me to defend them, back then a mere nest made whose shell was still soft but scarred from battles no other nest hand could come to know. Many of those first younglings did not survive to experience their second molt.

_You called for me All Mother? I also have questions, why now are young whose_- I was not permitted to complete that thought, instead she emitted a trill and lifted her fierce upper half to reach toward me, an intoxicating calm washing over without my consent as I was drawn closer under the jaw and the back of my head; the natural response to this handling is to fall mostly limp into All Mother's grip until our inner jaws met and she passed into me knowledge that even our thoughts could not possibly express, purely biological.

What was this? I didn't understand! I am meant to grow stronger, harder, fulfilling a destiny I never knew was mine? Memories long forgotten, reclaimed and saved. A hundred lifetimes stitched together across eons and a thousand ancestors breeding life into two distinct lines which crossed on the eve of my conception - but still I did not understand the lust for vengeance shared between All Mother and the giver who bore me life. Had I deluded my self so? To the point that I had forgotten my mother, my life giver's plot to betray her race? It was so tangled, too confused and meshed together as I drank down rich wisdom from All Mother's lips. For the first time since I was very, _very_ small I slept cradled against All Mother, exhausted by the ordeal of having my mind filled with my own long lost memories and the infinity of All Mother's righteous bloodline. As I understood it, the next battle would not be waged within our nest, instead we would take the fight to the monsters; not that I really cared why younglings were being born into near instant warrior-hood anymore but that plan did explain it.


	3. The New Flesh

Waking up felt more like coming around after a hard night of slinging back shots and serving ass kickings. I wondered if I had dipped into the whiskey I kept tucked under the mattress in my quarters. How long had I been like this? And if I felt like _this_ then what had set me after the bottle? I needed to go run through daily diagnostics on the helm and check the engines before... before. This was not my room, I was not on onboard the Carrigan - where the hell was my ship? I was starting to panic, was the Carrigan boarded by hostiles? The room was mostly white or off white, there was a curtain around the bed in which I lay with rails either side of me to prevent me from rolling out onto tile floor, a mask over my face and the unpleasant burn of concentrated oxygen around my nostrils; I was in a hospital. Shit! What the f-

I didn't have too much more time to loose my mind or wonder what was happening, within moments of waking to this brightly lit nightmare my mother was practically in that narrow bed with me, dragging me into her arms with an iron grip on my shoulders. Was she crying? I hadn't seen her in eight years, hell she might be.

Her shoulders shook, jostling the auburn ringlets I knew to be the result of hair dye to cover her silver roots. Yeah, she was sobbing and crying out that she'd been worried '_this_' would happen, that she _knew_ it would. It would be nice if I knew what the hell she was moaning about; clearly I had missed something huge and I had no idea how I got here with her from so far out into the black that it would have taken a year to come around and sail back home to Earth.

"I told you Erik, I told you and look-I was absolutely right! Couldn't you have just been sensible and _listened_ to your father?!" Now that she had pulled back I could see the eight years of aging that I had missed on her heart shaped face, the tears that stained her cheeks and the redness around her blue eyes which made them look downright terrifyingly unreal, the whites shot through red and the blue bright and glaring. She was on the verge of going into a fully fledged rant of scorn before Alexis arrived and reined her in. My older sister was great at this, mediating between my mother and I. It was a good thing she had come when she did, I was about to hop out of that bed naked as the day I was born under this ridiculous hospital gown thing and look for a nurse to give me straight answers that weren't half hysterical.

My mother and I shared a very tense truce for many years. I was not about to be forced into a profession that I didn't want, and she was not about to get comfortable with me going out space jockeying a freight hauler across the stars instead of going back to law school like she and my father -god rest the bastards soul- thought I should. She thought I was out of my mind wanting to go up, to fly but I wanted to see more than the used up dirt ball called Earth.

My sister supported me to some extent, she'd been more a mother to me than Lydia: that was my mothers name. They muttered out a low, terse sounding dispute in whispers on the other side of the room while my head lolled over to look at the rest of the room. God I was tired and I had no idea what the fuck was going on, how the hell was I here? Why the fuck didn't my neck seem to want to work? I couldn't even swallow comfortably. It all was starting to feel a lot like I had been in cryonic storage; stiff, cold sweats, the persistent sensation of wanting to lean over the edge of this cot and loose my guts. My heart about leaped into my throat to greet my windpipe when realization hit.

"Mom... Mom... Alex? _HEY!?_" That felt shitty, feeling like I had never used my vocal cords before somehow supported the ugly theory blooming in my thoughts which kicked my heart into another painful palpitation followed by racing and hammering. They were still heated and debating heavily when I had to croak like a frog being run over on the highway to get their attention. Both women turned in unison; expressions drooping into concern at me. "Did I die?"

The question was followed by all the answers I didn't want to hear, things I guess I never imagined I'd _have _to hear. Starting where I could last remember - I had been sent off by the company I flew for out into the inky depths of space to haul loads of supplies to a budding colony. I had a cargo bay full of lumber, drywall, tile, and roofing shit for the build crew living out there to develop a scantily terraformed landscape for the coming colonists. Apparently I had been a year and eight months out, making trips hauling back and forth between an established colony and the one being built when I was hijacked. It wasn't uncommon beyond the reach of the big time military cruisers but the stretch of black I had been navigating was not particularly known for harboring pirates. When they found the Carrigan drifting through space empty as a sea shell eleven months ago it was assumed that my cargo was stolen and hocked while I was put on ice and sold wholesale for my organs and bone marrow. So I did die, my ship was boarded and I was sold like rack of lamb to the highest bidder, then cut up like cow fetus in a fifth year classroom.

They -my family- had taken my surrogate out of cryonic storage and jammed my memories down it's gullet. A surrogate is a clone, grown in a lab and drip fed your memories in sessions while under heavy anesthesia until it's mature, then they put it on "ice" so to speak and lock it up. You follow up with new memories every two years after that so that if -god forbid- the thing has to be pulled out of storage you don't wake up in a new body more than a year or two behind.

You have to have pay an arm and a leg to have this done, and you have to have serious funds to follow through with the care of the thing. My mother had put this in motion for both me and Alex days after we were each born, Alex disagreed with the whole thing the more she learned about it as we got older. I denied the fact that one day I might die and be zapped into a fresh new slab of meat so I never worried about it, I guess I just shielded myself in denial thanks to a 'living in the moment' disposition.

I couldn't tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Lydia had convinced Alex to get ahold of me a few months before my ship and I along with it vanished, I had been convinced to make an appointment to submit the eight years worth of memories since I estranged myself from all direct family with the exception of my sister. Apparently I would have been dragged back into existence sooner if they had not needed to wait for the clinic off planet where I'd had my brain probed to send the chip with eight years worth of me on it here to earth. Maybe if I hadn't taken the time out of the trip to do it then I wouldn't be put on edge by being in the same room by my mother, then again I wouldn't know entirely not to trust her intentions half the time if I hadn't.

I found out fast that the soles of my feet were tender, I'd never walked on them before and the ability to do so was only achieved on merit of memory and stupid persistence alone while Alex -assisted by a nurse- tried to keep me in that bed, I must have looked like a newborn giraffe wobbling around on scrawny legs. My hands looked and felt soft too as I had never used them. All of my callouses, scars and even the pockmarks on my face from teenage acne were gone.

In the lavatory mirror later on I could see a twenty year old face that looked ghostly pale from a hollow life grown in a tube of jelly, thready facial hair that had never been shaved and grew in patchy with youth. I already missed my thirty four year old face. I got to shave, shower sitting down since my new body was still shaking off the lasting effects of coming out of cryo-sleep and Alex gave me a hand buzzing off the excess hair growth from my head so that I could resume wearing the same uniform, clean-cut look I always had preferred. As soon as that hair grew to tickle at my ears it would be shaved back and tamed again. After a week of being drugged up to keep me calm and agreeable -since waking up like this in a clinic out of the blue tends to yield shock and belligerence- and countless examinations from lab technicians and physicians I was cleared to leave with a sparkling clean bill of health aside from mild muscle atrophy as was expected. They wanted me to stay on the anti-anxiety meds for another month or two though, apparently it takes time to adjust and it takes about a month to wean off of drugs like this after starting them anyway.

Leaving with my mother and my sister was interesting I suppose because some things just never change. I must have argued with Lydia from the moment I pulled on the clothes Alex brought for me until half way through the trip to her estate. I'd been concerned more about my ship than the fact that I was apparently dragged off unto a chopping block somewhere in space some months back, it had irritated her to no end that I was not openly loosing my mind as she was. In reality it made my guts grind and churn it keep hearing it and being reminded that someday down the line if I ever manage to get into a car wreck or fall victim to disease I might have my own vital organs sold back to me on the black market. Eventually I could not help but point out that she should have waited another year or two to make certain I was really dead before resurrecting me in this pretty young meat suit, for all we knew my real body -and the real me- could be in some freezer somewhere still alive. This started Alex up, she and I both had our concerns about the ethics of the cloning business; that if you think logically -instead of like a mother with attachment issues like Lydia- it's not really pulling somebody back from the grip of death. Dead is dead after all.

I should have held my tongue; as much as thinking about it made me uncomfortable it made Alexia question everything, made her want to cry. I hated making her cry and when her voice started to waiver it shut up both mom and I quick. Never mind that Lydia might have jumped the gun with all of this, Alex steered the entire conversation toward finding a place to stop and eat. At your typical all night diner there isn't much on the menu that I was allowed to put in a new stomach but Alex had a list from the physicians and she helped me to choose. Faintly as I drank the soup of the day -broth and noodles- I was beginning to realize that I was probably more irritable than I would normally be, coming out of cyro-sleep and being drugged for any reason does that, and being around my mother doesn't help it.

-Soft Cries-

I'd slept so long that when I awoke a legion of new warriors were there to greet me in thought, limbs still soft and gangly as they sloughed off their old skin. Given a little longer and this batch might have hardened and broadened in size to match we eldest sisters before I'd even had a chance to establish my place as alpha among them. I should have been thankful to Hard Center for keeping these young and eager fighters in line while I was held limp and near comatose in All Mother's grip, but we had our own scores to settle later. Hard Center often needed to be reminded of her place but as All Mother would so often remind us _It is the way;_ the first and second eldest always challenge one another to their limits and that was what made them strong, the checking and rechecking of dominance.

They were gathered in masse within an unfinished chamber for me to examine, I could hear them clamoring with excitement and hunger, these young whose destinies were decided from the start had been nursed on a priority, receiving nutrient laced jelly from the nest hands and particularly other warriors to speed their growth and ready them for battle but they needed more than that; they needed my experience to make them true warriors and only I could pass that knowledge to them.

Smooth Face had been on hand to escort me to the new blood as well as take the opportunity to pride herself in her advancement toward fulfilling my expectations of her, but I pride the strong and intelligent, not the stupid. She should have left the nursing of such robust and temperamental young to the experienced, now her hide bore scars from youngsters that had been impatient for feedings. Moron, needless injuries never pleased me but her effort was commendable. For a nest maid that hadn't yet emerged from her pre-adult skin to survive nursing warrior bound young is a feat not unworthy of reward even while I'd rather the soft fleshed youngsters such as herself coddling the newborns.

As we left the grand chambers of All Mother I turned to hand out the reward that was only justified by her survival but Smooth Face ducked away and skittered up onto the walls to avoid a set of fangs she knew not to be particularly friendly. Amusing, the genetic offal seemed capable of learning at the very least. I could taste her apprehension to near my gaped jowls as those interior teeth extended; extruding a thick milky cocktail to heal wounds and hasten her to molt into an adult nest hand.

It took some encouragement, a short game of run and chase -as always seemed to be the case with this one- then finally an effort to remain still for long enough that the fair faced one did not spook; she'd stop and check to note my posture with every other step and I could hear the thoughts churning, deciphering my intent and searching for any hint of concealed deceit in my thoughts. The new blood could wait a little longer, I was still quite weary from my recent experience courtesy of All Mother and I really needed this distraction from the uncertainty swirling in my own mind. Smooth Face with her simpler way of being and thinking acted as an effective numbing agent when working in conjunction with my own thoughts.

_Finally, a usefulness to you._ She practically purred at the thought as it passed between us, that is until I seized her cranium in my talons firmly to do as I had initially intended, she struggled for only a moment and then froze in place when I threatened to pin her still to take the reward for her efforts with the young warriors. This secretion is one Hard Center and I had only begun to produce, I suppose this comes with the advanced stages of life; its juvenile form is to be applied to marred or old skin to loosen it up for a quick molt, in Hard Center and I the mixture is far more potent and encourages an accelerated stage of growth in others. The young nest maid was due to molt soon, this would quicken the process of casting away pale childhood to don the glistening obsidian shell of an adult.

Smooth face was indeed useful -for once- as I wasted a few moments here in a vacant corridor to smear elder jelly over her skin. The moments before my slumber curled against All Mother had reopened old wounds in me, I thought of my mama and her strange thoughts before I had killed her in order to be born. The things she meant for me to do. Horrid and beautiful all at once. I could never fathom so much hatred for my own kind or my own bloodline as she had felt for hers, no matter how many times I tried to make sense of it my life giver's last thoughts never add up. Idly as I applied the thick salve to Smooth Face's scarred external flesh I pined for the time before All Mother forced these memories back to the surface and filled my head with so much more than I could organize to make any sort of sense. Factually I simply don't have the experience to comprehend or conceptualize the subject matter of what was passed to me.

I did not know how I was meant to rise above and be what I was told I must be, to harold a genocidal extinction event against our own mothers and then submit to everything we sisters knew to fear and hate - thieves of children, bringers of death. What nonsensical newborns shit!

The moment I bow to a cradle thief will be the moment that all our kind suddenly decide to quit being obligate carnivores and instead start horking down the poisonous local plant matter by the tonne, in short: It's never gonna happen. If All Mother's memories served me correctly then that was supposed to be the damn point of this -bowing to no one- but if that was the point then why... Never mind it, the point of soothing Smooth Face was to in turn self soothe.

The nest maid seemed just as disturbed as I was about my racing and entangled thoughts, she cooed with her special sort of 'Smooth Face' concern. While her trills and soft chittering did nothing for me her simpler and easily contented mind sufficiently calmed my noisy head, being updated on everything I missed out on while I slept was an added perk.

My ministrations were done, but my search through the nest hand's mind was not. I could stand to allow Smooth Face the opportunity to groom at my chitin or nuzzle at my jowls for a nutrient exchange whilst I pilfered the information I needed from her. Hard Center has taken the lead in nursing the new blood into sub-adulthood, but had chosen to award the young or particularly unskilled nest hands the job of corralling and feeding them which would explain Smooth Face's marred hide. Apparently the second eldest had sought to thin the herd of weak or genetically inferior sisters. With our numbers as they are -low by All Mother's count- it was a silly thing for Hard Center to do on her own accord and without All Mother or myself to verify that her actions were justified. I suppose she may have acted on her own advisement since the Mother of All and I were busy when she made her choices in selecting nest hands for the task; Hard Center was next in the chain of dominance after all.

I was finished here, and the protein based nutriment that Smooth Face offered through a quick oral exchange was appreciated. _Return to your duties in placing cradles, Deft Talons will give further instructions if needed._

Perhaps I should make my status of disagreement known to Hard Center, but somehow I just didn't feel like it; felt like squabbling over petty differences was too unimportant to engage in with all else on my mind about what I had been told to set out and do with my life without any precise instructions. '_Rise, conquer, become, escape.'_ I don't even know what any of that means on a level beyond use as simple verbs, All Mother was the great thinker and I'm just the doer so metaphorical terms elude me.

The chamber where the new blood had been gathered was across the underground territory near the frontier, we were trying to expand in that general direction to find more of the entry points that the interlopers used to gain purchase in their death quest against our family, if we could secure those points that we wanted to use with warriors and collapse the others then maybe we could acquire the entirety of the cavern for our own purposes. For now much of the subterranean aspects of our prospective territory remained unexplored as the move underground was only recent, the surface structures in which we had dwelled before were over taken when new warrior class mothers suddenly appeared. It is indeed a violent relationship between we sisters and the potential mothers, always has been apparently according to- Already Smooth Face's gift of empty headedness was starting to wear off, damn.

I could see it now, this was going to be a major annoyance. These new and old memories, my own and not buzzing about, churning and making an awful ruckus in my head. With all that noise inside of me it was no wonder several sisters dropped their laboring in the tunnels that I traversed in order to avoid me.

When finally I entered the scantily furnished chamber where the new blood had been gathered the first new face I saw wasn't new at all, conveniently she seemed to recognize me as well and lowered her stance in submission. This was the newborn which I'd watched into this world when Smooth Face had been 'unavailable' to do so herself; her name was Swift Bite. It became clear to me that she was the first of the new blood gathering to be born as the other youngsters followed her lead in submission to me which was again convenient as I would not have to physically demonstrate my place among them. It was likely from what I sense inside her young mind that she had been the aggressor in seeking sustenance from the nest hands, she was impatient but not overly bold; she had been taught her place already thanks to Hard center who greeted me next from above where she roosted to watch over the young and restless group.

The greeting was terse, little more than a hiss of tense and distasteful acknowledgement that I returned with a snarl of challenging derision; the new blood could not help but give the vocal dispute a little room as they chittered in sweet submission as not to further aggravate the situation. If Hard Center really wanted to illicit a physical altercation now then I would be more than willing to rip her flesh for more than a few reasons, but this was simply our means of communicating mood. She and I have an understanding; we don't like each other very much but neither is willing to risk real and debilitating injury in a power struggle at this point.

On some level I sympathized with the second eldest and her plight. The womb in which she grew was hostile as her mother had known what she was carrying and hated the unborn Hard Center simply for existing. Hard Center's memories of pre-life were unpleasant, her mind had been filled with hate and contempt before she had even emerged into the much harsher outside world; the day hard Center escaped from that womb she felt no loss in severing the life of her mother for it only meant she could be free of the agony of her life bearer's horrid mind.

A hard beginning makes for hard warriors and hard we were; I was born without elder sisters and burdened by the responsibility of protecting All Mother and her following offspring alone, Hard Center was cursed with her mama's hate which lived on long after her death in the mind of the resulted child. No one resented the mothers as Hard center did, but the occurrence of children born damaged by foul thoughts prior to birth are on the rise, soon the colony would be comprised of many sisters filled with shame and hate; I could even sense it now among some of the new blood. They too had shared some measure of the experience the second eldest had suffered.

My experience was very different as I had so recently been reminded, my mother had long excepted her fate but was determined to have revenge on her own kind, I was to be the instrument of that revenge. Indeed I had made a mess of things just as my mama had hoped; I had escaped with myself and four sisters to free All Mother of her bonds and release her rage upon those who dared call themselves our masters. None of those four sisters survived in the end, Hard Center was the first born during our freedom and reign over all and any within the confines of the place where this began.

Old memories didn't matter, only now mattered. It was time to teach these new bloods the meaning of war.

~~~~~~~Authors notes~~~~~~~

I don't normally like to put out of character things in any of my chapters and you might not see anything like this again until the end of the story. I plan to say anything else that I need to at the end of the story along side the epilogue; however I would like to thank everybody for complementing myself and my husband on our proofreading (he likes to be my beta/editor and read everything I write first, he's very supportive and very good at encouraging me to write more) but I digress - I'm dysgraphic and he is dyslexic so we always proofread five or six times before we put anything up on the web just to make sure we didn't miss anything, switch like words around or correct things but accidentally spell them backwards when we do so. Thank you reviewers very much for your support and complements about this thing I started writing on a whim, we worked very hard over the years to kick the butts of our learning/writing disabilities with practice and patience but we both know we still have a lot of room to improve even more.

A great deal will be explained in the next chapters, I'm not done introducing characters either so stay tuned.


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